


delay like hours ticking by

by Runespoor



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-27
Updated: 2012-08-27
Packaged: 2017-11-13 00:26:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 363
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/497348
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Runespoor/pseuds/Runespoor
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Andromeda doesn't consider it a sacrifice.</p>
            </blockquote>





	delay like hours ticking by

**Author's Note:**

> for the [doomed ships comment ficathon](http://anythingbutgrey.livejournal.com/760101.html?thread=12421157#t12421157), prompt "i will follow you into the dark".

When she had to make a choice, it was really no choice at all.

Seventeen and bright-eyed, it wasn't hesitation that kept her from telling him, “I will come with you, where do you want to go?” on the spot, but the slow realization that she had drawn the road her life would take months or years earlier. If there had ever been crossroads leading away from it, they had long since been paved over, a long, singular way as far as her eye could see.

In the beginning he'd asked her if being caught with him wouldn't come at too high a price.

“I'm enjoying myself way too much to stop this so quickly,” she said, artfully careless. “Don't tell me sneaking around after dark frightens you?”

And she'd smiled, wicked and sweetly arrogant, and kissed him when he rolled his eyes. She didn't care about the past and she'd take on the future when it came, counting the seconds with her heartbeat until they eschewed their friends, and then she'd count the seconds in kisses. 

Time had broken down into fragments, stolen quarters of the night away from her dormitory, moments snatched between classes like their fingers brushing, 'accidentally', in the halls, her life rearranged into Ted and nothing.

She would look at him and know deeper than blood and bones that there was no place she wouldn't follow and no sacrifice she wouldn't make.

At the other end of her life time comes to an abrupt stop when she is told that he has been killed. In the landscape of her mind there is a wall, where the road used to stretch, cold grey stone like Azkaban, blocking her view. 

It wouldn't be so bad if she could break it down; if she could force a door or if she could climb over. She would find some way, scratch it down if she had to. Andromeda Tonks is a resourceful woman. But she has a baby to take care of, and she cannot follow.

The clocks start ticking again, counting the seconds like when she was young, but she feels like her time has stopped flowing, perpetually frozen in 'nothing'.


End file.
